Own your past like a receipt: keep it for reference, don’t carry it everywhere.

Your history is worth keeping and not worth hauling everywhere. There is real information in what you have done, especially the parts you regret, and it becomes useful the moment you can consult it without reliving it. Carried constantly, it adds weight to every new situation and makes you treat unrelated people as though they were the old ones. Consulting it beats living in it.

When an old thing surfaces, ask what it can tell you about this specific situation. If the answer is nothing, set it down for now. You are allowed to have learned something without paying for it indefinitely.